Scaled Down Scales

A Tough Fight

...on the Docks of Garaitha...

6

JUL/18

…as the Infiltration Team Gets Spotted.

Aurora was glad the ritualists had been able to scry the docks at Garaitha’s Anvil. The whole area was under a Forbiddance ritual to prevent scrying. The Wizards from Nefelus told her the power of the Sovereign Gate enabled them to find The Cev’ren in the vast shipyard in spite of these Forbiddance protections.

They showed her a map. Unfortunately, none of the Portals they had so far been able to find were in the immediate location of the admiral’s flagship — The Cev’ren — but a couple were nearby.

Her plan: To sneak in with the assassin’s guild party and try to capture or kill Admiral Kada’ne to get his crystal key; then, they would be followed five minutes later by wave of stealthy adventurers, each trying to penetrate from a different gate; finally, ten minutes after that, the largest wave with dozens of fighters would attack openly in as many locations as possible.

“Hopefully, the later waves will distract them from the main mission,” she told the Hundred Heroes gathered outside the Fane of Chaniir. “Capturing the crystal key.”

They arranged for a special signal when they had found the key to let the Hundred Heroes know they could withdraw.

“Don’t press your fight so hard you will not be able to break off when we find the key,” she warned them.

Across the bluffs and trails surrounding the fane, she saw the mages of the Coalition scribing dozens of planar portals, causing the fading twilight to blaze with eldritch light.

Spread out before them, the greatest heroes of the mortal realm stood in expectation of the battle to come. Most are on foot, a score or more mounted on steeds still skittish from having made the transit through portals from their own lands.

One force of rangers from the desert lands south of Elsir Vale make a last check of the tack on a flight of griffons.

No one spoke.

At Aurora’s signal, Bejam and his mages activate the planar portal in front of her, and a flare of white light cut through the darkness. Within that light, hazy images of the shipyard flare to life — windowless stone buildings, the open spaces between them thronging with Githyanki and giants.

Shadowfox introduced her to the crowd and she got them worked up before Nox made his speech.

Around her, the Hundred were ready, waiting to move at their word.

Nox made his speech: short but powerful:

“Using the advantage of our surprise, we will hit them — one hundred as a thousand.”
— the final words of Nox Rhasgar’s
speech to the Hundred Heroes

“Hundred as a thousand! Hundred as a thousand!”

Shade was impressed by the way the crowd reacted to Nox’s words. Picking up on them immediately, they began chanting the words louder and louder as Team Admiral stepped through the gate in front of them.

A Githyanki patrol spotted Nox almost as soon as they began to work their way toward their goal: a storeroom they hoped would lead them to the admiral’s ship.

“I guess we’ll have to fight our way in,” she told the others.

The fight did not go well for them. Nox got surrounded — not the sort of position the Sorceror was used to fighting from. Shade herself went down and had to play possum while Aurora healed them.

But she was not a true healer.

“Just a Druid with some good healing spells,” she told himself. The Druid was also summoning animals — firebirds and wolves mostly — to help with the fight.

Then she suddenly realized their mission was not to kill this Githyanki patrol, but to get past them.

In a flash she Ghost-on-the-Rooftopped up the construction equipment and made it through the hole in the wall to the door to the storage room.

“Alas, it is locked.”

She tried to pick the lock, but could not open it.

Looking back down at the rest of the kidnap-the-admiral team, she saw they were in desperate straights.

Nox went down — it was the first time Shade had ever seen him taken out of a fight. Aurora stabilized him, but Shade had to Ghost-on-the-Rooftops back down to pull a potion from the Sorceror’s belt and revive him.

That gave them just enough to finish off the patrol.

“I guess killing them works, too,” she said. “And this way they cannot get help.”

They searched the bodies, but found nothing beyond the usual silver weapons carried by all Githyanki. They knew they had to move on if they were going to be able to use the next wave as a distraction.